


Waves That Rolled You Under

by meggannn



Series: Conquest of Spaces [3]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Destroy Ending, Disabled Character, F/M, Politics, Post-Canon, Recovery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-06 15:11:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12213405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meggannn/pseuds/meggannn
Summary: Garrus wasn't made for vigils, and Shepard wasn't made for peacetime. Coming home from the war isn't something you conquer with a bullet.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** There are a lot of themes here found in most post-war fic. At a glance, some of the thematic content contains PTSD, injuries, disabilities, and post-traumatic recovery. Later chapters will feature Mass Effect-typical combat violence. **This chapter includes some sexual content.**
> 
> Getting this fic to a readable state has been a very long process that wouldn't have gotten to where it is without the invaluable support and beta work of my friends @tetrahedron, @thunderheadfred, and @theherocomplex. The fault for any remaining errors is entirely mine. As always, comments and feedback are always warmly welcomed.
> 
> Recommended listening: ["Enlighten Me" by Grouplove](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF3ubdUYJ20)

Garrus realizes only as he reaches the front door of the apartment that he has returned home entirely on autopilot. He’s too exhausted to chide himself — spirits only know who might have tracked him while his attention was out — but this close to a warm, familiar bed, trailed by security cams and undoubtedly a dozen hidden protective agents, he can’t bring himself to care. His feet bring him to the front door, and in the second and a half before he unlocks it and lets himself in, he sends a wordless prayer that perhaps Shepard has left the lights dim for the evening and retired to bed early.

Regretfully not. He’s greeted in the hallway by bright fluorescents and a bizarre smell wafting through the foyer. He squints, sighs, and the door swishes shut behind him. “Shepard?”

“Kitchen,” comes her voice from around the corner.

He dims the lights in the small entryway and tosses his keys into the tray onto a side table, making his way right to the kitchen, where Shepard is poking at a bowl of something, reading a datapad with one hand and using two thin human utensils balanced in the other. Her hair is gathered in a loose knot at the back of her head and she sits cross-legged on the chair. Her meal smells thick and foreign, like most human food, and she looks up at him as she takes a bite out of a chunk of orange meat.

“Hey,” she says around a bite; his translator just barely picks it up. “Leftover night.”

Garrus drops into the chair across from her and rubs his brow, sticking his feet up on a nearby stool. He closes his eyes.

“I put your stuff in the microwave.”

He grunts.

She says, “You’re welcome,” but he can hear that she’s smiling.

He cracks his eyes open and looks at her. She’s wearing a dark red sweater — never seen that one before — and black casual pants.

He frowns. “You didn’t go in today?”

She stares at him. “My day off.”

Under Chakwas’s strict orders, Shepard has been given leave to work half-days, though Garrus would never have known it by the hours she keeps. Often he’ll drag himself back to the flat by 8PM, only to find a dark and silent apartment and a missed ping from Shepard notifying him of some new crisis developing on the Council. He suspects the days that she _is_ home when he arrives are due to Karin’s influence: the doctor has recently taken to paying Shepard surprise visits at her office, and escorting her back to her apartment if she discovers her weekly hours have tallied over thirty.

Still, he frowns. “Your day off is tomorrow.”

Shepard looks up at him, squinting with confusion, but she still somehow manages to look faintly amused. “It was today. You realize you’ve been at the office for thirty-eight hours?”

“I was — ” Garrus checks his omnitool. Blinks. Glances to the date and time in digital menu hovering in the parlor hallway. Hm. “Shit.”

“Rough case?”

“Yes, but — ” He waves a hand in frustration. They were supposed to spend the day off together. _Shit._ “I forgot to call. Completely forgot. I’m sorry.”

Truth be told, if Garrus had had his way half an hour ago, he’d still be at the office. But perhaps it’s for the best — he hasn’t dealt with this brand of administrative fatigue for years, the kind of wear and tear that used to accompany twelve-hour stakeouts in the Kithoi Ward, all-nighters with his partner in the office on involuntary manslaughter charges, and he feels woefully unaccustomed to it now.

Across the table, Shepard takes a bite of whatever it is she’s eating, balancing those thin utensils between her many fingers. His eyes are always drawn to her hands every time she uses these things: like many human instruments, they look rudimentary at best and outright nonfunctional at worst, yet somehow tools that would be awkward and clunky in his hands always look easy and fluid in hers.

Garrus feels his stomach clawing at him.

Tonight, that old C-Sec diligence carried him long into the night at work, hours after his fringe began to itch and his plates grew pale from exhaustion. His last meal was a bag of dextro crisps around — spirits — 10AM, but he’s been running on less than five hours of sleep over the past two and a half days, so exhaustion wins out. Moving from this chair might be impossible. He considers falling asleep right here.

“Eritus wrote, he said you were working on a big one.” Shepard’s voice pulls him out of a drowsy haze.

“Yeah,” he sighs, forcing himself to stay awake. “Some salarian bastard in operations was passing security info to his merc buddies in the Traverse. Caught him before they managed to breach our systems, but we’ll have to reset and reprogram every security measure we’ve made since last year. Some want to relocate to the Archives. I had to spend two hours convincing people why it’s a bad idea to have ninety percent of classified Citadel info located in one place.” He heaves another sigh; this one feels heavier than the last. “You ever think about how the Reapers’ best efforts couldn’t kill us, but the politics might?”

“Every damn day.”

“Distract me. How was your day, sweetie?”

Shepard snorts into her food. “Fine.”

“Come on.”

Her smile dims and she grunts into her bowl. “Email. Laundry.” She says the last word like someone’s squeezed it out of her.

He smirks. “How’d that go?”

“You know how many unnecessary features these machines have? It’s asking me what settings I want for my cotton, my delicates, my designer jumpsuits or cashmere whatevers. Didn’t even know where to begin with _your_ things.”

“Commander Shepard, defeated by a washing machine.”

She points with her prongs to a bundle of something on the couch in the living area, over on his left. He glances; a mixed pile of their casual wear, his civvies incorrectly folded by human hands, but folded nonetheless. “Prevailed, thank you.”

“Well done,” he says, trying to stifle a yawn. “Check mastering this housekeeping thing off our to-do list.” His sister would be thrilled; Solana was always fussing about how he would starve to death from neglect if she left him alone for too long.

“Neither of us has learned how to cook,” Shepard reminds him.

“That’s what the microwave is for.” Feeling a bit more energized, he heaves to his feet and heads to said microwave, where Shepard has left a dextro MRE and set the timer for him. She’s input the settings for freeze-dried rations, which he ate regularly on the _Normandy_ by nuking and eating straight out of the package, often over the sink on days when someone needed him back in the battery or war room as soon as possible. Shepard selected an obscure kind of jerky he doesn’t remember buying for himself, which only requires a straightforward fast-frying on the stove.

She’s always had trouble telling his food apart. Most of his diet consists of meat of different flavors, which he has been told (frequently and with varying levels of facetiousness) look like seventeen shades of blue carrion to the untrained human eye. But he knows she’s trying. He replaces it with another MRE suitable for the microwave and presses the timer.

As soon as Garrus sits back down, Shepard asks him, "Do you think I'm impertinent?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Got an email from Esheel," she continues as if she hadn't heard him. "Answer the question.”

Unwrapping his food, Garrus snorts before he can help himself, and Shepard rolls her eyes. “Fine. Do you think my impertinence impedes my ability to do this job?”

He says carefully, “I would’ve raised the issue sooner if I did.”

She looks at him, and he sighs. “Impertinence isn’t exactly a… sustainable trait in politics, Shepard.”

“I took the Council seat because traditional bureaucracy is going to get people killed.” Shepard gestures at him with her utensils. “ _Did_ get people killed. And they voted me on because I’m decisive and I get results. Now they’re complaining because I’m living up to that.”

Chewing, Garrus decides to forego picking that apart. At least for a moment. “What did the email say?”

Shepard jabs at a curled green vegetable with her prongs. “She disguised it under concern for my health. ‘These policies take time,’ ‘we don’t want you to push yourself’ — she thinks I was born yesterday.”

“Was it about anything specific?”

“Probably. Maybe she’s still pissed about the defense appointee.” She shrugs with one shoulder but doesn’t meet his eyes. “I never got the sense Esheel liked me anyway.”

Last week, Shepard had voted against the confirmation of the proposed Minister of Defense for Citadel Space whose predecessor, a turian general who had held the position for nearly four decades, had died in the final push toward Earth. The candidate, Marska Revl, had been a former salarian STG agent. “Loose cannon,” Shepard had told him in private. “Bau introduced us shortly after I was inducted. I read up on his file. Great solo agent. But his missions have a sixty-seven percent casualty rating and when I questioned him on it, he looked at me like he’d never heard the phrase _employee retainability_ before. You want him in charge of our fleets?”

And with the vote tied on the Council, the issue went to the ambassadors, where the proposal had failed. Reactions ranged from muted relief among certain parties to impatient fury among the rest, the loudest of whom were calling it Shepard’s attempt at stalling until a human nominee was considered. Councilor Esheel, who had put the name forward, was no doubt still chewing her tongue over the result: if the Council had held the vote just two weeks earlier, before Shepard had arrived on the Citadel to balance the scales, it would have passed.

“Their own fault for waiting,” Garrus says honestly, and she cracks a smile at that. “Can’t say I won’t be glad I don’t have to see Revl in cabinet meetings.”

“See? I was doing you a favor.”

“But you know you can’t pull that card often,” he says cautiously, poking around the green stuff on the side of his carton; he thinks they’re a sort of dried vegetable genetically spliced for the dextro diet. Now he knows he didn’t pick this out himself. “He would’ve been hell on the Terminus and human colonies, but he’s real popular in Citadel space. Voting against makes it look like you don’t care — ”

“Of course I care about non-humans.” She scoffs as if the notion is ridiculous — which it is — but what interests him more now is the strength of her reaction. “It’s not just human settlements out there. Besides, we have you at the top of the pyramid here on the Citadel.”

He coughs out a startled laugh. “Yeah, but trusting me to cover your ass so soon after I took my position at the bureau — you’ll be seen as biased.” He tries the green stuff. Kind of bland, and too salty for his tastes.

“I’m not biased. You’re doing a great job.”

She digs back into her meal. In private, when she’s rushed or agitated, Shepard always seems to eat hunched over, as though someone might take it away from her. Garrus tries never to follow that train of thought too far, knowing her history, but it always makes something in him clench when he sees her as tense in the home as she is in public.

“Anything else?” he asks, sensing another topic of consternation.

“What?” She looks up at him like she’s forgotten he’s there. “No.”

Somehow he doesn’t believe that.

Shepard must sense that he won’t be swayed, because when she meets his eyes again, hers quickly glance back down to her bowl. She clears her throat, brushes her mouth with a napkin, and places her utensils flat over the rim edges. “You’ll think I’m paranoid.”

“We are paranoid,” he reminds her. “But we’re usually right.”

She considers that, tapping two fingers for a moment. Her nails click against the tabletop.

Finally, she sighs and says, “Sorry. Not now. Put up the wall.”

It takes Garrus a minute to remember the euphemism Shepard had created as a request to stop discussing their work life within the confines of their home.

“All right,” he says. “Here.”

He takes their things, tosses the MRE wrapper, and washes up her bowl in the sink; Shepard heaves to her feet, limps her way to the front door. She double checks the locks then turns off the lights in the parlor.

Garrus glances over, his hands full of suds. “It’s only nine.”

“We’re both exhausted,” she says from the couch where she’s gathering his laundry. “I saw you covering that yawn. Meet you in the bedroom.”

Twenty minutes later and freshly showered, he enters the dim light of their bedroom to find Shepard sitting on her side of the bed, fidgeting with the clasp at the back of her knee.

“Need help?”

“Got it.”

She heaves her prosthetic off with a grunt and rolls under the covers slowly, stretching and settling in.

Garrus runs a towel over his fringe and tosses it into the hamper, then climbs in after her. Shepard turns off the lights from the nightstand and the blinds flutter closed, the station’s artificial daylight replaced by a darkness that blankets the room. It always gives him the illusion of their own private cave in the heart of the Citadel. He sinks into the soft mattress, feels it give under his weight; every muscle from his calves to his carapace instantly thanks him. With his eyes closed, nothing exists outside the boundaries of the bed. The only movement in the universe is the slow, steady sound of Shepard’s breathing beside him.

“Hey.” Shepard’s voice is low, but in the quiet, it hits him like a beacon.

Half of his face is pressed into the bed; he makes a low, inquisitive sound from his throat.

If she were anyone else, he might have called it a pause. Shepard asks after a moment, “You up for anything?”

Garrus considers. The weariness of the day hasn’t entirely left him; only a good night’s rest might satisfy, which sounds about as fantastical as a functioning government right about now. It might only be made worse with the stress of physical exertion, coupled with the worry he might not satisfy her, already half asleep as he is. But if she’s in the mood…

Instead he raises his head. He can make out her outline in the dark; she’s staring at the ceiling, not at him. “You have anything in mind?”

“No. Just curious.”

“Here.”

Shepard does turn toward him then, and he can’t see the look on her face, but from the slowness of her movements, he imagines it’s cautious. Times like this, seeing how hesitant she is still, he's reminded of what it costs her, the energy to want anything at all. The strength to admit it aloud.

He moves forward to meet her. He doesn’t lean over her like he once might have, but settles into her side, close enough to feel her hip against his, her breath against his crest when she exhales.

He can already tell she’s interested, but in that slow, lazy way that follows an exhausting day; the way that tells him she craves his company as much as she wants satisfaction. She cranes her head forward and he leans down halfway to meet her. She needs release, and now suddenly, with her fingers curling around his spine like that, he needs to be close to her, needs to feel her relaxed and boneless under him. His hand travels lower and he presses a thumb deep against her, still separated by those thin layers of cotton.

But they’re both too tired for foreplay: he grunts and balances up on one elbow, dragging her nightwear and underthings down with one gesture. She pushes a pantleg over what remains of her thigh, and leans against him entirely, trusting his weight. Like this her breasts are pressed tight against his carapace, and with his other hand he licks a finger, drags it down her abdomen, lower; when he reaches her pelvic bone, Shepard holds in a breath; when he presses inside her, she releases it in a shuddering rush. His fingers curl into the soft give of her back.

She’s molten warm down here, and shit, what he wouldn’t do with her if only he had more energy — but she still shivers and bucks against his palm. He twists his finger gently; her curls shift against his hand. Everything is heightened in the dark, every movement and sound she makes amplified a hundredfold — surrounding him, enfolding him, like he might lose himself in her forever if closes his eyes and pretends.

She spreads one hand wide across his back, a finger on every sensitive ridge of his spine like warm marbles on his back, presses _deep_ , and it goes straight to his groin. She knows him too well. His face heats, the air between them so warm it feels tangible, and entirely on instinct, he grinds his pelvis into hers, crushing his hand between them while Shepard licks up his neck, trails the edge of a mandible. He tries to hold them so still for her, but can’t help it, they flare wide as a low groan escapes his throat. His head feels so heavy, his movements sluggish, torn between crashing into his pillow or rolling her onto her back and driving her deep and slow into the mattress —

Before long, Shepard lets out a sharp, sudden gasp and a full-body shiver; his finger is suddenly swallowed tight; his thumb rubs the skin of her pelvis and he holds her comedown tight in his palm. His hand floods with her finish, trails all the way to his wrist.

He slowly pulls out, too tired to consider washing up, and is distracted by movement near his groin. Her fingers are working his edges, pressing against the loose skin, drawing him out. She trails her way to the head of his cock, slow and sensitive. He stops himself from jerking, takes her wrist instead.

“I’m fine.” It comes out harsher than he means it to.

“Garrus?” Her voice comes out in a breath.

He finds her mouth in the dark, presses firm against her lips, then settles back into the mattress with relief, arm still around her waist. Shepard leans into his side, following his lead. Still bare from the waist down, her curves press into his hip, head leaning on his carapace.

Panting quietly into his neck, she whispers, “You sure?”

He closes his eyes for what feels like the first time in years. “I’m sure,” he says quietly. Already he can feel himself drifting off. “You can thank me later.”

She murmurs something in reply. The warmth of her next to him is a home he hasn’t yet put a name to, but just now, it’s enough to pull him into sleep.

* * *

Garrus wakes shivering.

The room is still pitch black, but gone is the the warm, inviting den he had settled in only hours earlier.  Now the darkness feels more akin to a cavern in the frozen tundra. Without opening his eyes, he gropes through the dark and yanks the comforter over himself. Only a brief sense of wrongness makes him pause, inspiring him to crack an eye open to spy the emptiness on the other side of the bed.

He pushes himself up, squinting. With more skin exposed, he’s at liberty to say the cold is unnatural, more than a brief spell of cool air — odd.

He cracks open his eyes. The clock on the nightstand says 03:26 AM. When the air meets his calves and his feet hit the bare tile of the floor, he shivers. He yanks the comforter off the mattress and wraps it around himself, wondering vaguely if this is someone’s idea of a cruel prank, and exits the room to search for his missing bedmate.

This early, the cold is viciously sobering. Fifteen years of service had acclimatized him to uncomfortable awakenings, but the cold is an enemy he will never forgive. He wanders into the hallway and spots light from the utilities closet brightening the carpet at end of the hall in a pale rectangle.

Garrus shivers his way down the hall, where Shepard is hunched over doing something with the controls to the heater. She’s wearing several sweatshirts stacked on top of each other, with her N7 jacket zipped halfway up her torso to accommodate all the extra padding. Frustrated, she smacks the side of it once with the base of her palm.

“Need help?” he grunts.

She glances back at him. At the sight of him wrapped like baby pyjak in a zoo incubator, an amused flicker crosses her face, but at his raised brow, she gratefully refrains from commenting and waves a hand at the heater.

“All systems are online. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

Garrus moves closer to look for himself. Pressed between up against the shielding control center on his left, there’s little room for movement in the closet, so he steps up behind her and leans over her head, resting the edge of his chin on her temple. He keeps his hands under the comforter. Tuning out Shepard’s irritated noise, he reads the diagnosis summary: evaporator coils check out clean, the pipes are clear, the air filters aren’t clogged — none of the usual problems.

He clucks his tongue, thinking. The sound comes from the base of his throat, where Shepard’s head is nestled. Garrus reaches one hand out from under the comforter and pulls her closer. She leans in, seeking warmth, and Garrus concentrates on the problem at hand.

The blower motors are fine, control board is fine, engine is fine — huh. Everything checks out, but the temperature is still clocking in at about ten degrees lower than their default 22 Celsius.

Garrus isn’t entirely certain he has the brainpower to solve this mystery half-naked at 3AM, wrapped head to toe in Shepard’s down comforter, but the thought of going to bed freezing cold and waking up the same is not a pleasant one. “Our unit is checking out fine. Could be a station-wide problem.”

“So no telling when it’ll be fixed,” she says around a yawn.

“Doesn’t this place have a backup generator? I’ll route it to the vents.”

“It’s for emergencies, but yeah.”

“My toes are icicles. This is an emergency, Shepard.”

“All right,” Shepard says, and he can hear the amusement in her voice as she swipes to dismiss the digital furnace overview. She brings up the controller settings and activates their private generator, reroutes the central heating to their private unit, and then — overkilling it — types in her Spectre credentials to maintain the system settings for the next seventy-two hours.

_“Please allow one hour for your central unit to come online and integrate with your administrator settings. Estimated restoration: 0426 AM.”_

Shepard yawns again. “Is it even worth going back to bed now?”

Garrus grunts and opens his right arm in invitation. One side of the comforter opens like a cape, and Shepard immediately shoves herself into the crevice of his arm and turns off the light. They trudge their way back to the bedroom — Shepard slightly slower, favoring her right leg.

Garrus grabs another, warmer layer from the dresser, shoves it over his head, and settles onto the bed while Shepard grabs a quilt from the closet. It’s a large thing he doesn’t think he’s seen before, pattered different shades of gray and black in the dark, and she tosses it over him. Garrus spares a thought for the fact that they’re still lying on the sticky sheets left over from their earlier activities, wonders if they’re worth expending the energy to change at 3AM, and immediately decides the answer is no.

Shepard winces when she bends over to join him on the bed. Garrus reaches forward to help her with her knee, but she waves him off.

“Leave it.” She rolls into him, face smashing into his neck. Her voice is muffled: “I’ll be up in a few more hours anyway.”

He settles back and tries to find sleep again. The quilt helps. It wasn’t meant to cover a fully-grown turian, but fortunately Shepard is small; he’s careful not to let the wool tangle or catch in his spurs as he finds a comfortable angle. Shepard grunts in protest as he shifts and his cold feet brush against hers.

“Sorry.”

He feels her exhale on his neck. “Remember when this was what we worked so hard for?” she mutters.

Something in his chest catches at that. Garrus knows not to take it personally; she means the steady tedium of normality, the lack of an active enemy, the supposed peacefulness of domesticity… at least until the galaxy tumbles back into its normal level of chaos and they are once again needed elsewhere.

Before he can respond, Shepard has drifted off. Wrapped in the comforter, her prosthetic is cool against his knee.

He remembers all too well.

* * *

Garrus next wakes to a swarm of insects attacking his left arm. He jolts awake to realize it’s only his omnitool, which is buzzing so strongly his arm has gone slightly numb on one side. He squints, struggling to focus: the orange glow is fuzzy but the alerts all have variations on the same headline: _FACILITY INFORMATION UPDATE — SERVICES UNAVAILABLE — MAINTENANCE ONGOING_.

He hears the squawk of Shepard’s tool subjecting her to the same fate.

“My _god_ ,” she mumbles groggily. “How many updates can you give about a generator?”

“Mm _?_ ”

“Station-wide alerts.” Shepard’s voice is slow, shaking off the sleep. “They just came in now. Apparently power to some comms and heating blocks in the Presidium went out around oh-two-hundred.” She sounds as though she’s reading this word for word. “They’ve got power back in medical, life support, food storage and processing, and other quote-unquote ‘critical areas.’ Probably C-Sec and the embassies.”

“It’s warm under the blanket,” he says without opening his eyes.

“Scratch that,” she says, sounding stunned. “ _Not_ the embassies. They were apparently ruled non-essential. Oh, you’ve gotta be joking.”

Abandoning the idea of going back to sleep, Garrus drags his head out from under the covers and stretches, cracking the joints in his left arm and rolling his neck. He sighs and pushes himself up to sit. Shepard, next to him, has her eyes trained on her tool and is scrolling swiftly through several station alerts.

“Shit.” She exhales. “The Council’s been dismissed for today. I reckon you’re probably the same.”

Garrus vaguely recalls a conversation with Chief Lieutenant Eritus the night before that had ended in his politely being shoved out of his own office and an order to go home and get some rest. He skims his own tool briefly and raises his brows. “Not a security breach. Just a malfunction. I should still go in. This’d be an ideal time for a surprise attack on our firewalls.”

Shepard pushes the covers off and stands, stretching. It’s only now that Garrus realizes how much warmer the room is. If it weren’t for the quilt still covering him, he might’ve thought the cold this morning was a very vivid dream. In the light now, he sees the quilt is an awful, garish orange. Where the hell did she find this?

“I’m calling Tali,” she says. “Maybe she’ll have a clue.”

Garrus rises and prepares for the day, swapping his usual business uniform for light armor. He always feels a bit like he’s attempting to play the role of his father when he finds himself wearing anything but battlewear. In the office, with men saluting and deferring to his word wherever he turns, he’s often busy enough not to notice — but when he dresses in the mirror, it’s becoming a struggle, more often than not, to feel like himself and not _Castis Vakarian, 2.0_.

Shepard is at the island in the kitchen, trying — and by the sound of the looping signal issuing from her tool, failing — to connect to Tali. Garrus grabs a ration bar for breakfast without looking at the label and bites into it.

“I brought home some secured files yesterday from the network.” Shepard says without looking up. “I can keep busy here. You going in?”

Privately, the fact that he hasn’t heard anything yet concerns him. Surely the Executive Commander for Citadel Defense would count as essential personnel?

Garrus’s tool buzzes with a priority access call; he lets it through. Some timing. Eritus’s profile fills his screen.

“The bureau’s under lockdown,” Eritus says, sounding harried. “No one comes in or out for fifty hours. Same goes for the networks: no outside access. Policy after a system malfunction; we don’t want anyone wandering in or out, even the heads. Sorry, boss, but you’ve been banned from the premises.”

“Malicious activity?”

“Not a peep, but we want to make sure this was actually an accident rather than a calculated attack. And we need to ensure this wasn’t an inside job, if you get my meaning.” Eritus looks irritated more than particularly worried. “If I were a terrorist or otherwise evil-doing drain on society, I’d love to strike when the entire Citadel has its pants around its ankles.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. You sure you have everything you need there?”

“We’re in the bureau, boss, not the front lines. We’ve got running water, functional toilets. We can always steal food from machines in the canteen.”

“Twelve hours without me and you’ve all turned into barbarians.”

“Yeah, well. We’ve already got a bonfire going in your office, so we’re in it for the long haul. It’s gonna be a slow fifty hours in here.”

Garrus resists the urge to look up at Shepard, who is still at the kitchen island. Selfishly, he hopes it is.

* * *

An hour later, Shepard is spread out on the couch, surrounded by a small mountain of datapads. She’s turned the television on low for background noise; it’s currently airing some long-ago recorded asari cooking program. Neither of them pay it any mind. Garrus has established a temporary office in the kitchen about five meters away, datapads spread out around him on the table like a map of intel. He’s removed his omnitool and placed it at his elbow, expanding the OSD to the size of a workable screen.

Typical, that they’d spend their one day off together doing what they did back on the _Normandy_ : going back to work. He’d find it funny if he weren’t so preoccupied with his latest work priority: the Citadel is in quite desperate need of a black-ops team. Irissa has forwarded a list of potential candidates for him to divide into ground, intel, and air units. After looking over these CVs, he can’t help but be slightly disappointed in his options. Hell, these are drastic times — over three-fourths of the Citadel’s agents were reported dead or missing after the dust had settled, which leaves an unnerving amount of unfilled spots in the bureaucracy. Seeing their prospects laid out like this, he reminds himself that he isn’t in a position to be picky, but… a quarter of these candidates haven’t even finished their first rotations. Would he even be able to whittle this list down to _twenty_ agents that he’d feel comfortable sending into the field?

Shepard sits up on the couch and stretches her arms to the ceiling, straining. She always waits for her bones to crack, and he reminds himself not to be alarmed — that’s one of the few sounds humans make he’s unsure if he’ll ever get used to. With a resounding _pop_ , her arms flop back down and she rubs at her face with her hand, palm covering an entire cheek, eyes closed.

Garrus goes back to Irissa’s suggested personnel. Davereux: a big name in Alliance black-ops and occasional transfer strategist to the Union. A brilliant mind, but disobedient, and not in the fun way. He’d be a nightmare; there’s no way Garrus would let him within twenty meters of any of his missions. Maybe as a handler for the STG Citadel branch…

The sound of a _shhhhik_ and a pop of metal. His head whips up. Over the kitchen counter he sees Shepard undoing the clasp of her knee, frowning.

“Hey,” he says loudly.

“Hey yourself,” she grunts, not looking up. She’s fiddling with something; by the sound of it, something metallic.

“Tell me you’re not modding your own leg. By hand. Without supervision.”

“Okay,” Shepard replies, still not looking up, “I’m not.”

Garrus rises, leaving his work at the table, and heads into the hall closet to pull out his smallest toolkit and a towel. “If you’re going to mod your prosthetic, you’re not doing it with your bare fingers,” he says when he comes back into the living room.

“I’m just tweaking the plates,” she argues.

“Yes. With this.” He hands her a screwdriver handle-first. “And I suspect a towel would be useful as well. Are you oiling it? Shepard — have you been doing this this whole time? Whenever my back is turned?”

“Whenever it irritates me,” Shepard says, which doesn’t really answer his question.

 _Great,_ Garrus thinks. He’s found his new project for the morning.

In five minutes’ time, Shepard is stretched back on the couch with her knee on a throw pillow, and Garrus is seated on the floor, adjusting the shin of her armor plating with his customized flat-head.

Shepard’s prosthetic is an asari design, recently adapted by Alliance biomechanical engineers for the human skeleton. Also, advanced. As in, if he hadn’t already given his heart to his Widow, he might’ve offered this thing dinner and a drink. And she should know better than to screw around with it herself — but then he can’t entirely blame her. If he had a prosthetic leg customized specifically for him by a dozen of the galaxy’s greatest biomedical technicians, he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off it either.

Shepard’s mechanic, an asari doctor named T’Besa, had been firm on biannual overhauls for at least the first two years, but Shepard handles most of the oiling and maintenance herself; Garrus suspects she has worn nothing but black trousers since being discharged from the hospital entirely out of fear of oil stains. The two of them had been given reluctant approval to tinker for her comfort and balance, but changes to internal machinery or the port would have to go through the doc. He has a faint suspicion they’d heard about his hobby of modding his own electronics due to their insistance he sign that in writing.

That reminds him to ask about Shepard’s other prosthetics. He’d tweaked with the sizing specs last week.

“Are your fingers hurting?” he asks without looking up, but Shepard doesn’t respond.

Garrus glances at her and sees she has dozed off on the couch. He smirks and turns back to the prosthetic.

It’s almost assuredly the port that’s giving her trouble, and the lingering aftereffects of the fourteen-hour surgery connecting the skeletal frame to her bone. He’d read up: some amputees had mentioned feeling lingering bone pain post-surgery for up to six months. With the microfibers, nerve connectors, and port, it amounted to a lot of new machinery the body had to grow accustomed to in a relatively short time. Beyond the occasional tweak to the armor, there’s not really much he can do to help.

He registers the sound of a faint buzzing somewhere outside the apartment, but doesn’t look up.

Should she switch from steel to something else? Carbon fiber or chrome might work, especially if the Citadel’s temperature is going to start fluctuating. But Shepard’s last surgery was barely four months ago. Coupled with her other injuries, he can’t feasibly suggest she go through another refit so soon.

The buzz sounds again.

On the couch, Shepard rubs at her eyes. “Garrus.”

“Mm?”

“You gonna answer that?”

“What?”

She jabs a thumb at their doorway as if to say, _You expect me to get it with my leg dismantled on the floor?_

Garrus looks up. Over the door vidcom, someone small, purple, and familiar is requesting access to enter their unit.

“Oh hell.” He screws the last plate back into place and hands the prosthetic to Shepard, who pushes herself up against the arm of the couch to put it back on.

Garrus heaves to his feet and heads for the door — then pauses. He glances over the vidfeed from the camera outside; the ID is registered to Rael’Zorah, yet the video clearly shows a familiar purple mask peering up at the camera. As he stares, her small hand waves up at him.

Weird. He opens the door.

Tali speaks in a rush as she moves to embrace him. “Comms are spotty, so I decided to come over myself. Also — I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were back on the Citadel.” Even with him leaning down, she stands on the tips of her toes to reach around his carapace. “I had to find out by running into _Chakwas_ in the embassy med room. Wow, it’s _warm_ in here. Also, hi.”

“Hi.” His mandibles flare, amused. “What were you doing in the embassy’s medbay?”

“Visiting Raan. She got a cold after the heating stabilizers malfunctioned this morning. She’s been named the quarian ambassador, didn’t I mention?” Tali’s attention shifts past his shoulder. “Shepard! No, don’t get up.”

Garrus sets the locks again and moves back into the living room, while Tali and Shepard reunite. Shepard has indeed gotten up, only to sit back down at Tali’s insistence.

“Okay, that’s not as bad as Joker said it was,” Tali says as Garrus begins cleaning up his toolkit. She’s tracing the scar on Shepard’s face with her forefinger: it runs in a ropey line from the top of her hairline down across her left eye, jaunts haggardly to the right, and drifts off as it reaches to her ear. On days when Shepard hasn’t slept or eaten well, the skin weave on where her skull had been damaged sometimes turns red and angry. Today, however, her color looks better, and the skin weave disappears into her natural complexion.

“Do I want to know?” Shepard asks.

Tali looks uncomfortable now. “He keeps exaggerating, making jokes about ground meat — they’re tasteless, but clearly you look fine — ”

Shepard laughs. “It looks worse than it is. But why were you in the clinic?”

“Oh I’m fine, don’t worry. So is Raan.” By the slight shift in her shoulders, Tali looks almost guilty sharing this. The quarian fleet had had one of the lowest population casualty ratios of all Council species, mostly due to their lack of ground territory and FTL civilian ships. “I figured it was easier to stop by than deal with the comms.”

“What’s wrong with the comms?”

“Well.” Tali glances to Garrus and back to Shepard again. “In the system reset this morning, we noticed a weird bug in across most comm accounts. The official word is that everything’s fine. The unofficial word is that we’re working on it.”

“At the door, you showed up under your father’s name on the vidscreen,” Garrus says.

“We think some sub-systems are confusing frequently-associated keygroup users,” she says. “Primarily family. Shepard, I think you should be good. Garrus, you might show up as your father, under his C-sec access. All of your account information is still there; it’s just a display problem. You should have access to your own account like normal, though. Tech’s already on it. But you can see how someone might take advantage before it gets fixed.”

“There’s always something,” Shepard says, covering a yawn.

Tali seems to suddenly realize that Shepard is still in her sleepwear. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“Working in today,” Garrus says.

“I was going to head out for lunch, actually.” Shepard stretches again. “I’m supposed to be doing daily walks or something. Want to come?”

“Sure,” Tali says. “Though I’d recommend bringing a jacket, it’s chilly out there.”

“Still?”

“Just in the corridors; all internal units are on generator power. I can change my suit settings but you might not be comfortable.” Tali gestures to Shepard’s sleeveless nightshirt.

“I’ll grab a coat.” Garrus leaves for the bedroom. Behind him, he hears the the television volume rising — now airing an old asari soap opera — and Tali laughs at a one-liner.

In the closet, he grabs his warmer suit and debates briefly on what to bring Shepard, before grabbing one of her long-sleeved shirts and the N7 jacket.

Ready to go, he reaches for the lights. His eyes pass over the mirror, and he meets a pair of eyes that aren’t his own.

Butler.

Garrus blinks and doubles back, frozen.

Butler, standing as tall as the day he’d died, Vindicator strapped to his back, that broken nose and crooked smile…

Those three bullet wounds gaping in his chest, slowly oozing dark red blood.

In the mirror, it looks as though Butler is standing directly behind him. One more inch and they’d be embracing.

Butler scratches the stubble on his chin and quirks his lips, not speaking. Garrus can hear his voice anyway, without even trying. _Ready to head out, boss?_

Not again.

“Garrus?”

He looks back out to the hall.

Shepard calls, “We’re just going out to lunch, no need to get dressed up.”

When he turns back to the mirror, Butler is gone. Garrus rubs at his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. Sighs. And makes sure to turn off the light when he leaves the room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies if you get two notifications for this chapter update; something went wrong on AO3 so I had to delete and re-post.
> 
> **Warnings:** Along with the usual warnings, **this chapter includes an incident of potentially triggering violent assault.** Descriptions of the incident are not gory, however if you feel uncomfortable with scenes that parallel real life assault crimes, you are always free to contact me at [my tumblr](http://meggannn.tumblr.com/ask) for specifics or parts of the text to avoid if you are still interested in reading.

The Sunset Strip — and with it, Shepard’s old apartment — had been one of the many neighborhoods lost to power outages and oxygen loss in the initial Crucible explosion. Shepard and Garrus had been given a suite in the former Redina Ward, where ambassadors, low-ranking politicians, and the occasional STG agent or Spectre on leave were temporarily housed. Once an upper-class series of apartment complexes and pricy grocery marts, Redina had been a respectable neighborhood of mostly young professionals and couples raising families.

Now, it’s a silent block of corridors stuffed back to back with apartments loosely repurposed into housing units for bureaucratic and military officials. Shivering as they make their way down the empty corridors, Garrus wonders if the three of them might be some of the few brave enough to venture outside: he sees no sign of anyone else at all.

In their small group, Garrus follows Tali and Shepard down the maintenance stairwell, all equally wary about using the elevators after the power blackout, before exiting into the main lobby of the apartment complex. The salarian security guard waves at them behind her thick coat as they head out onto the strip.

“Where are you staying, Tali?” Shepard asks.

“I’ve been staying with Raan in Qui’Xui,” Tali says, naming the ward that used to house the quarian ambassador. “We shared a cabin on the _Normandy_ , so an entire suite is bizarre. I don’t know what to do with all our space. We've been inviting other ambassadors and their families over, anyone who needs some place to stay before they’ve been processed.”

Shepard covers her fingers with the ends of her long sleeves, draws the zipper of her jacket up, and stuffs her hands into the double pockets. “You weren’t kidding about the cold.”

“It’s better down in the lower levels. One of the benefits to living next to a generator with a bunch of engineers. I thought Adams was a workaholic…”

They leave the Redina ward and exit into the district square that connects several wings in a high-ceiling rotunda. Their footsteps echo off the empty walls. Security has been lax here: they pass by a few looted shops, some with electronic construction barriers warning off passersby.

“You’re helping restabilize the wards?” Garrus asks, stopping to let a krogan in a worker’s uniform pass.

“Me? No, they have enough hands for that. I’m here as a representative for the fleet, along with Raan.” Tali looks back at them and shrugs a shoulder. “But — don’t spread this part around — I’m also working on reactivating the geth. Daniels and Donnelley brought over the AI core from the _Normandy_. We have a few other volunteers, too.”

“I’m surprised your supervisors went for that,” Garrus says.

“Well, _officially_ , the project doesn’t exist,” Tali says, a bit mischievously. “I had to twist some arms. But then Hackett threw in his support and some funds, and Liara’s sending in engineers and leftover resources from the Crucible. I made the argument that reconstruction would go about ten times faster with the help of the geth. A heavy-lifting population of artificial intelligences that don’t tire or need, you know, food, like us organics. That did the trick, I think.”

Shepard tugs her hood over her head and pulls on the drawstrings as they pass by a few people heading up the stairs from below. “Well played. Any progress?”

“In a sense. We’ve identified the problem, it’s more a matter of rebuilding the geth to what they _became_ , not what they were when they were first activated…”

Tali leads them down a flight of steps, the bottom of which fans out in front of what looks like what was once a high-scale asari boutique; the windows are now dark, and a digital overlay warns them uselessly about emergency evacuation orders. A series of ads follow them down the stairwell on their right, brightly-colored, energetic advertisements for films, concerts, and sales nearly two years out of date. On their left, the Citadel opens out to open air and a small park below, not unlike the upper Presidium shops. The only sound is that of their footsteps descending and their murmur of conversation reverberating out into the cold air.

This is why Garrus dislikes leaving the apartment unless he has to: this wing, every wing, every corner he patrolled and walked and lived in, that was once brimming with life and civilization, feels cold and unnervingly abandoned when he catches it at the wrong hour. Populated only by what the Council deems “essential personnel” and the few fortunate — or perhaps unfortunate — civilians that had managed to survive, the everyday thrum of life is gone from the station. Certainly the temperature stabilizer situation isn’t helping, as most intelligent folk are surely keeping indoors when the air is cold enough to freeze his plates together… 

They reach the lower level where the staircase rejoins the strip, and people mingle in scattered groups across the ransacked food court. A few radiators dot the area along this balcony, with the occasional group of locals huddled around them for warmth. There are a few places open here: cafes and eateries redesigned into ration pick-ups and supply stations managed by a cycle of volunteers, furniture and department stores now repurposed shelters for those whose units are unliveable. Everyone is bundled in warm clothing, save for the quarians. Garrus spies two asari down by the lower railing that have the hungry look of journalists searching for a new scoop. One of them has a deactivated camera drone in the palm of her hand and he recognizes a fading Citadel News Network logo on the bag that dangles over the other’s shoulder. He discreetly steers Tali and Shepard out of their line of sight.

The two of them are talking about the reconstruction on this part of the wing. He forces himself to pay attention.

“…mostly non-essential.” Tali says. “After seeing the state of the the power cores, I kind of agree with them.”

“They’re in that bad a shape?” Shepard asks as they stop at the entrance to the lower strip. There are a few queues spread in front of them, all of roughly the same length, for different ration deployments based on species, chirality, and medical restrictions.

Garrus realizes, looking at the area, that he is still having trouble deciding which part of the new Citadel makes him the most uncomfortable: the ration stations swarming with people like insects to a fire, or the scavenged, abandoned shopping centers.

The scene before him, however, clashes with the volume of information he reads at work. His biweekly briefings with the Council are a constant stream of data and impersonal numbers that more or less amount to a line graph, all telling him the same thing: resources are settling, finally, to what one might call an equilibrium on the Citadel. The Citadel government has always been efficient at keeping supplies in reserve; it’s been three months since the last food shortage. Hydroponics reached sixty percent functionality last week.

He knows this. Their numbers will increase with time. This will get better.

…It’s just difficult seeing his home like this, is all.

“It’ll hold,” Tali says. “For maybe a year or two.”

“That within your expectations?” Shepard muses. She is glancing up and down the strip with an unreadable look, but from the tension in her shoulders and the way she’s jammed her fists into the pockets of her jumper, Garrus suspects she’s about as comfortable as he is.

Tali sighs. “Shorter than we’d hoped, but longer than we expected. Don’t worry, we’ll sort it. My attention is actually a little split — I keep thinking that even if we had just two Legions, they’d get it sorted in a fraction of the time we would. You know the gethcan build a dreadnaught in two-fifths of the time it takes the fleet? But I keep running into bureaucratic roadblocks, only a few people even see the AI shutting down as a _problem_ — ”

“If there’s anything I can do,” Shepard starts, but stops as Tali shakes her head.

“Oh, you know… I doubt it. It’s not really your jurisdiction, is it? I can work on it with my supervisor, I just need to press him a little bit—”

Shepard’s head turns sharply. She looks strange with the hood up; without knowing her height and mannerisms, Garrus might have lost her in a crowd. She stares into the distance for a moment, blowing a bit of hair out of her face, and hmms. “Anyone else notice those reporters have been inching closer?”

“Yes,” Garrus says immediately. He’s been watching their progress with the motion tracker in his visor.

“What’re we in the mood for?” Shepard feigns interest in the stores before her, discreetly inching toward the one closest. “This one has rations, and the other one has rations. Any preference?”

“That one has tadae’ku,” Tali says, pointing toward the furthest in the aisle, opposite the direction of the journalists.

“We have a winner.” Shepard locks elbows with Tali and takes Garrus’s arm in her hand, politely steering them both toward the line, which is mercifully short.

Before him, Tali leans forward over the counter and gives their orders. Avina, it seems, is down once again. The gentleman dispensing rations on the other side is a thin, pale salarian with a deep orange scar crossing his forehead. His right eye, clearly damaged in whatever initial injury had granted him the wound, is low-lidded and dull, and shows life only when it flicks behind Tali’s shoulder. Garrus pinpoints the exact microsecond the salarian recognizes Shepard.

“Commander Sh—!” His voice is loud, loud and high enough to draw attention.

A few people glance their way just as Shepard makes a furiously quick movement with her hand: raising her forefinger up to her closed lips. The salarian quiets immediately. Garrus positions himself casually between Shepard and a group of passing quarians, all dressed in light blue suits, and hopes his bulk is enough to shield them from any curious eyes.

Tali continues as though there had been no interruption. “—and tadae’ku for me. I don’t suppose you have any packets of the maatke, the kind with the green and white logo? Or know where to get any? I can pay extra.”

“Sorry,” the salarian says, glancing between Tali and Shepard as though he’s unsure who to address. “Since the new delegations, dextro condiments fall under non-essentials. You can probably get some at the station on level 14, though non-essential sustenance is meant to be reserved for…”

“That’s all right, thank you,” Tali says. “And Garrus, what did you want?”

“Whatever you’re having,” Garrus says. Behind the salarian is a small, dingy mirror in the rear corner of the shop, within which Garrus sees the asari journalists failing rather miserably at looking inconspicuous. Now, really — he’d once seen a krogan in a crowd of hanar at a poetry convention making a stronger attempt to blend in than these two. Whatever it is they think they’re doing, the taller asari is glancing Shepard’s way every few seconds with a noticeable microphone visibly tucked next to her collarbone.

Shepard slides her credit chit across the counter. The salarian blinks as though he’s never seen currency before, then collects himself and shakes his head quickly.

“Oh no,” he says loudly, and in the high pitch of the salarian language, it nearly sounds like a squeak over the sound of Garrus's translator. He seems to remember himself. “I mean — Commander,” he continues in a quieter tone, “I couldn’t.”

“You can,” she says, keeping her voice equally low. “It’s the law.”

But the gentleman refuses to budge. The next thirty seconds, by Garrus’s estimation, are filled with one of the strangest arguments he’s ever seen Shepard get herself into: sliding the chit across the counter with two fingers, only to slide it back when it is rebuffed by the station administrator. Above the counter, they argue over the necessity of payment in hushed tones, like some kind of reverse mugging. Still leaning across the counter at the till, Tali looks back at Garrus, and somehow without words or even the ability to see beneath her helmet, he understands her expression entirely.

It finally ends when Shepard leans over the counter. Her hood may protect her from recognition, but in this gesture, it has the downside of making her look like a teenage hoodlum threatening a store owner. “I have a responsibility to do my part to rebuild the Citadel economy,” she says firmly, keeping her voice low. “If you don’t take my chit, I’m going to shove it up your nose.”

“She’s kidding,” Garrus says automatically.

“Commander,” the salarian says somewhat desperately, lowering his voice, “war heroes get their rations gratis for the next five years. Executive orders from the Council.”

“Here,” Garrus says, sliding his chit own across the table. “Mine’s Council sanctioned. Compensation for war responders doesn’t apply in the Hierarchy.”

The salarian fortunately doesn’t seem to recognize him, otherwise they might be here all afternoon. “Thank you sir,” he says, while Shepard rolls her sleeve up and glumly slides her chit back into the slot at the base of her omnitool. “Your total comes to—”

“Just send the receipt to my tool,” Garrus says, glancing back at the mirror. In the time his attention was elsewhere, the asari journalists have disappeared from view. He doubts that’s a good thing.

Tali picks up the little blue dispensary bag full of their orders and steers them out of the queue, away from the small crowds of gatherers eating out of similar recyclable blue ration bags. Garrus glances back, but can’t find the asari again amongst the crowd. He has to wonder who would bother venturing out of their units in the middle of a power blowout. Anybody who could afford not to do so would certainly be waiting it out the within the comfort of their own apartments, save perhaps for those who needed to stock up on necessities, or the unlucky few whose homes were affected by the shortage. Why the hell are there so many people here?

“It’s warming up,” Shepard says, rolling up her sleeves to reveal thick pink scars that stretch over her forearms like spider legs. She leaves her hood up and rummages in the bag for her order, looking for the little orange “levo” sticker.

Garrus temporarily abandons his search for his hunger and says, “Speak for yourself.” He takes his order, marked green. Tali’s gotten him iliheraux, the closest turian cuisine has to the quarian tadae’ku. And faroe relish — the _spicy_ kind, which he hasn't had in over a year…

“It all feels the same to me,” Tali says innocently. She pops opens the seal of her suit with one hand — pardon, _induction port_ — and begins carefully peeling back the sterilized wrapper of her order.

Shepard is eating some sort of wrap folded over itself in a cylindrical shape. As she peels back the sky blue wrapper, she says to Tali, “You were telling us about the AI. Has there been any update on — ”

“Commander Shepard?”

Blast it all. Garrus can keep watch for counter snipers, charging krogan, and identify seventy-three land-mine triggers from a distance of up to fifty meters, but save him from the damn press.

He turns; behind him are the two asari. The one standing closest is a middle-aged matron holding up a camera drone expectantly, and standing just behind her is a maiden perhaps a century or so older than Liara. Their attention is, of course, directed entirely toward Shepard.

The foremost journalist fiddles with the drone. “Apologies, Shepard — it’s Councillor now, isn’t it? Glad to run into you. Mind if I ask — ”

“Sorry,” Shepard says without missing a beat. Her mouth is halfway full of levo sandwich. “M’ not her. Get that a lot.”

“Begging your pardon, Commander, but…” She points to the N7 logo emblazoned proudly on Shepard’s chest, then looks up rather apologetically at Garrus, who remembers in a disconcerting epiphany that he, too, would be an easily recognizable figure for any journalist specialized within Citadel political circles. Dammit.

“Nicked it from an Alliance bin,” Shepard tries lamely, pinching the edge of her sweatshirt. Garrus raises a brow, but the damage has been done. He hears someone far off behind him muttering, “I told you it was her.”

Garrus discreetly begins to look for exit strategies. Behind her helmet, Tali is motionless, but he has a feeling she is doing the same.

“Just a few questions, Councillor,” the reporter tries again, but Shepard cuts her off.

“I’m not doing any interviews,” she says, wrapping up her barely touched lunch and placing it back in the blue takeaway bag. “Contact my press secretary in the embassies if you need a quote.”

The younger journalist raises a brow silently, face expressionless, but the matron tries again. “Of course, Shepard, but — ”

“Please, we’ve only just come out for lunch.” Tali’s voice is pitched higher than normal; she’s trying the innocent daughter-of-the-admiral routine. Garrus appreciates the effort, but knows it’s useless. The press are starving varren waiting for scraps: nothing will satisfy them until Shepard’s entire crew has been picked clean to the bone.

“I dislike using this card, but you know…” Tali lowers her voice now and says, almost conspiratorily, “we _were_ the crew that saved the Citadel. Forget we were here, and I'll give you an exclusive on — ”

“Like you saved _Thessia?!_ ” The younger asari, quiet until now, erupts with a sudden ferocity that makes Tali jump. Her expression has turned livid and desperate — and then her arm whips up from the bag at her side.

It happens so fast that Garrus acts on impulse. His hand grabs the back of Shepard’s hood and _yanks_. Shepard reaches out to catch what’s been thrown, and Garrus shoulders his way between them —

Liquid hits the back of his collar, but a gush arches over his shoulder and hits Shepard square on her raised arm and forehead. She gives an inarticulate shout and falls to one knee. There’s a rattling, crying sound, her pained gasps barely carrying over a horrendous _sizzling_.

He bends to meet her and is hit with an overwhelming, acidic stench, visceral enough to make his nostrils clench.

Garrus rips her sleeve from her arm. _Fuck_. A wide swath of skin on her forearm is bright, unnatural, garish red. Steam is rising; Shepard is hissing, unable to form words. His fingers are flying over his omnitool. Spirits. He doesn't know what the hell that was, but he should still have some poison detection and treatment program from his work back in C-Sec — fuck, _fuck_ , where is it —

“What was that?” Tali’s voice above him — as he peels back Shepard’s hood. His breath catches when he sees what’s underneath.

Tali’s voice again, louder, as furious as he’s ever heard her screech: “What did you _DO_?!”

“Holy shit!” Voices and screams up and down the strip. Gawkers are gathering around them like scavengers to a corpse…

Shepard’s eyelids are clenched shut. Blood and yellow pus seeps from the skin on her forehead, dripping down into her left eye. Wherever the acid hit, her skin has turned twisted, blotchy, puffy at the edges; Garrus dimly remembers that Chakwas had once said _the scar may heal eventually, if we get a little lucky_.

“I know it hurts,” he says. And he can’t help thinking to himself — with certainty, with a pit in his stomach and his heart in his throat — that this is it, she’s lost the eye for good — “But don’t open your eyes. I need to have a look. _Tali_ ,” he barks, “call the embassy EMS, they’re closest.”

“Give her some space,” somebody says —

“Jesus, that looks bad,” says somebody else —

“Get her some water,” says —

“Step back,” he calls out loudly. Tali hasn’t responded, what the hell is she doing? “Someone hand me their water bottle.” To the people next to him, he snaps, “I’m calling an ambulance. Back away from the railing.”

A few people obligingly scoot away, but their eyes stay glued to Shepard, still hunched over in his arms. One-handed, he presses the emergency call in his tool with his thumb, and a red light begins flashing as the signal locks. He looks around: Tali and both asari have disappeared. No time to worry about where they’ve gone.

“Talk to me,” he instructs.

“Wa — ” Shepard tries. Pants. “Warm.” She says it between quick breaths, growing quicker. “It is. Now.”

She is, indeed, burning up. Her temperature climbs steadily higher and he keeps one eye on his tool, watching the response call flick from red to green, _PLEASE STAND BY_ —

Come on, come on, _come on_ —

He tracks her vitals on both his tool and visor. Lights flash in his periphery vision; the ambulance. Her metrics spike, and she never stops shuddering, mumbling nonsense under her breath. It takes two minutes. It takes an age.

A hand juts out from the crowd. The salarian from earlier edges through some rubberneckers to pass him a water bottle, a towel wrapped around an ice pack. Garrus gently washes what he can, then holds the pack to her temple as the ambulance finally docks. Someone else puts their jacket around Shepard’s shoulders, sleeves awkwardly dangling around her neck.

Shepard is muttering something into his collar.

“What’s that?” he asks quietly. He rises and brings her to her feet; when she stumbles, he sweeps up her legs and climbs into the rear of the vehicle. Around them, paramedics are preparing a cot; around them, voices are discussing toxicity levels and human fragility and _Is she contagious?_ and _You’re sure this is Commander Shepard? Doesn’t look like —_

Below him, Shepard is still muttering her mantra.

“It’s fine,” she’s saying, and he realizes belatedly that her one good eye is crying. One of his hands is on her back, moving rhythmically with the heaving force of her breaths, and she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t stop, she never stops, and so neither can he. “I’m fine. Garrus. I’m fine.”

* * *

His face is all over the news by early afternoon.

Acid wounds are never pleasant, so it comes as no surprise that photos of Shepard are missing from most verified outlets. In most images, Garrus’s face is pictured as the only publicly recognizable figure on scene: bent over Shepard, lifting her into the ambulance, reaching out the rear doors to toss a stranger’s bloodied jacket back into the crowd before departing. One quick, ten-second vid of Tali pursuing the attacker taken from a shaking camera even made it onto CNN.

The netizens are having a field day. As he sits outside Shepard’s sickbay awaiting Chakwas, Garrus makes the unpleasant discovery that he has addiction for online masochism.

_> That clip’s probably years old. Why would a quarian have access to the New Citadel?_  
_> > Oh we’re supposed to care about Shepard again? I thought she died on Earth. Hey, Council, my colony’s gone without running water for over a year now. The Alliance handed out unfiltered water and my mom’s been puking for a week and a half. Is someone going to fix this or should I just pass my time reading about the latest Commander Shepard scandal?_  
_> >> Are you sure that’s Garrus Vakarian? Doesn’t even look like him. Honestly this whole thing just screams publicity stunt._  
_> >>> The angle in the image doesn’t show the scar. It’s him. I can tell from the colony markings.  
_ _> >> But his scar’s on the left. I met him once in the refugee commons, it’s definitely on the left. They coulda just found a relative or someone to sell it. Why would Shepard be wandering around the Citadel without a bodyguard or something?_

Adrien Victus’s office is silent save for the incoming calls and pings hitting his tool. Garrus swipes irritably; his forefinger is starting to ache. He can’t even keep the settings page cleared for the five seconds it would take to turn off notifications. Half of the civilized Milky Way is apparently trying to reach him — and yet nowhere, nowhere in the entire galaxy, is Miranda Lawson when you need her —

“Thought you’d be with her,” Victus says from the doorway, and Garrus looks up. His former general looks as though he’s aged three decades in as many hours. “Is she up?”

“A little while ago, briefly,” Garrus replies. “Minea put her back under before she left.”

Victus blinks at him, pausing as he makes his way around the desk. “She’s gone already?”

“Down to the labs to check on their progress. Nurse is in there with her.”

Minea, the trauma doctor on duty, had shut herself into Adrien’s suite with Shepard, two nurses, and a large kit of antibiotics, skin grafts, and enough gauze to swaddle a klixen. She had emerged only an hour later, declared that the patient was stable and that there was nothing else she could do — at least not without the involvement of Shepard’s primary care physician. One nurse now remained in the room with Shepard, monitoring her vitals until Chakwas arrived, who had apparently been caught up in some kind of media traffic. Garrus's foot taps anxiously, impatiently awaiting her in Victus’s suite and painfully aware of every minute that drags on without her arrival.

He had peeked into Shepard’s room earlier: sound asleep, with her face and arm both swathed in white gauze. Aside from the dark navy sling cradling her arm and the square of medical tape on her forehead, nothing seemed out of place. All of the lingering anger had bled out of him at the sight of her motionless and silent in a foreign bed.

He’d ducked back out for fear of accidentally waking her. Now, the more time passes, he feels his agitation rising again. The lab hasn’t yet finished processing the acid residue from the bottle Tali took down to the toxicologists: without those results, they couldn’t report on the toxicology, or predict the extent of lasting damage. Minea had likened Shepard’s wounds to second-degree burns, and treated them as appropriately as possible while awaiting the full lab analysis. There’s nothing left for him now but to wait. For the lab results, for Chakwas’s arrival, for his simmering temper to cool and the knot in his heart to loosen.

Victus is saying something. Garrus drags his head out of the fog of his own thoughts and forces himself to listen.

“You need me to make any calls? No family, right?”

“No,” Garrus says. “It’s fine. Thanks again.”

The Primarch is shaking his head before he’s even finished his sentence.  “Door’s always open. Better that you came here. Huerta’s overflowing with reporters.”

“Yeah, that’s the last thing we need.”

Victus exhales in dry amusement and moves behind his desk to open up a lower cabinet. Garrus realizes belatedly that there is a deep blue C-sec shock blanket around his shoulders. Where had this come from?

Damn omnitool is still buzzing up his arm. He yanks the clip off his wrist and initiates a hard shutdown, then tosses the band onto Adrien’s desk and drops his head into his hand.

“You look like you could use something strong,” Victus says, and within the grunt of his voice, Garrus senses sympathy. “Can I offer you anything?”

Garrus lifts his face from his palm. Victus is peering into what looks like a minibar stocked full of elegant glasses and tiny bottles of amber liquid.

“I’d love to,” Garrus says. “But I’m probably driving us back home. You go ahead.”

The Primarch pours himself what looks like an old turian brandy that, judging by the date on the bottle, might very well have been sitting in that fridge before Sparatus took office.

“You know your liquor, Vakarian?”

“I know how to drink it,” Garrus replies dully.

“That I believe. Evera used to say you were only tolerable to swap stories with when you were soused.”

Garrus rubs his forehead again, avoiding eye contact. Evera, his former second-in-command. Shit, he hadn’t thought about her in ages. “Sorry, sir. Hard to stay clear-headed when I think about…” About his task force, his time back on Palaven. About being deployed to Menae with Victus’s platoon, seeing half his squad separated, seeing those that remained with him slaughtered by monsters and his own men turned against their will…

“Garrus,” Victus says, watching him. “Take this as an order from your superior.”

He looks up.

“Wake the hell up and remember why you’re here.”

With that, the Primarch of Palaven toasts him, then neatly downs a quarter of his glass in the time it takes Garrus to remember to breathe.

“You know why we authorized you to lead that task force, Vakarian?” It isn’t a question.

“Feel free to remind me, sir.”

“Don’t be coy.” Victus takes the desk chair. Sitting across from him, Garrus is uncomfortably reminded of those painful Career Days as a teenager and later C-sec years. Strongly worded lectures by Palin, voices of authority criticizing Garrus’s patterns of behavior, reminding him that the badge he wore on his carapace was more than just another medal in his file.

“You remain,” Victus continues, “one of the few people on this entire station with which I would entrust the command of our fleets, without reserve or hesitation. And it’s not just because you were right about the Reapers.”

“ _Shepard_ was right about the Reapers,” Garrus corrects, but Victus waves a hand dismissively.

“At this point our peers appreciate that the political distinction between you two is irrelevant. You’ve both proven you can put the public before the personal in the direst circumstances, for the highest stakes. Nobody’s interested in ripping that barrier down — besides the press.”

He takes another long drink. When the glass clinks back down, there’s only an inch and a half of brandy at the bottom.

Victus pauses and glances to the bedroom doorway. Garrus knows what he’s waiting for: the suspicion of movement or sound, any sign that Shepard's nurse might have developed a curious ear on the other side. After a moment Victus is apparently appeased, and he continues.

“…Today’s incident will raise concerns,” he says eventually, voice slightly lowered. He watches the brandy finally settle to an equilibrium in the glass. “But we both know this isn’t a case of writing Shepard a month of mandatory leave and expecting her to pop back up as a shiny new model. I trust the doctor’s judgment, naturally, but as a friend I must say that at this point, the work might be detrimental to her — ”

“She’d gut you if she heard you say that.” Garrus huffs a breath, but it’s humorless. “Lower your voice.”

“If she doesn’t know it already, she’s a fool,” Victus says sternly. “But I don’t let imbeciles make use of my hospitality. She’s here because the Council has an open spot and the humans deserve a voice to fill it; but there’s no law saying it must be her.”

Garrus feels guilty agreeing even within the privacy of his own mind. Yet after this day has taken so much out of them all, he finds he is too tired to be anything but honest. “I’m open to suggestions,” he sighs, feeling vaguely as though he has betrayed Shepard somehow by voicing his concerns to a third party. “But she wouldn’t have taken it if either of us had seen another option. Nobody else capable wants it.”

“Surely there are interested bureaucrats elsewhere; on Earth or surviving colonies? I was under the impression humans would scrutinize Shepard going into politics, with her extensive military background. Don’t like — what was that expression? Mixing their… something, with something else.”

“Mixing business with pleasure,” Garrus corrects. “Different context. But you know they make an exception for her. Besides, none of them proved they can broker the type of interspecies cooperation the job needs.” Garrus looks back at his tool sitting on the desk, wondering if he should put it back on. Hell only knew how many messages had hit him while they were talking. “And we know she can do it. She’s only filling in until the right name lands on her desk.”

“Everyone will fall short of Commander Shepard if she’s their base for comparison,” Victus says. “That’s akin to expecting every C-Sec detective to have your father’s experience. We work with what we have. And if the current candidate isn’t able to perform the functions of the job, then we find a new one, and accept that the learning curve will be — ”

“Wait,” Garrus says immediately. Something about his language had sent up a red flag. “Adrien, are people complaining?”

There’s a pause that’s just a fraction of a second too long. “No complaints,” Victus says, and he sounds honest. Garrus watches him carefully. “At least assuming Rivea isn’t hiding anything from me. Though it’s difficult for me to judge whether that means people agree with her right to be there, or if they’re refraining from stepping forward because she is who she is. After all, I don’t work with her every day.” At Garrus’s unconvinced look, Victus continues: “If anyone _relevant_ had debilitating concerns with her taking the seat, you’d have heard them already.”

“But…?”

Victus levels him with a look, as though he’s grown tired of leading the conversation and expects Garrus to start contributing his share. “ _But._ It’s a demanding position even for someone who’s spent their life playing the political game, and Shepard is a newcomer. Nobody doubts she has the discipline or stamina.”

“But that was before she fell to Earth and half the Citadel landed on her,” Garrus finishes. “Look, sir, I need to be… clear about what you’re asking.”

“I’m not asking anything. Merely giving my professional opinion.” Victus pauses again. “It’s out of concern, too, Vakarian. I mustn’t be too proud to admit when I’m worried about a friend.”

Garrus nods, then after a moment’s deliberation, confesses. “I’ve had this conversation with her.”

“I take it you didn’t get your way.”

“It ended on the compromise we have now, with her working half-days,” Garrus says. “Which is starting to feel like the same thing, yeah. Guess stubbornness is something we share.”

Victus looks at him for a long moment, calculating, and Garrus wonders dully what he sees, and if it satisfies him. “Apologies,” the Primarch says eventually. “You’re tired of hearing this I’m sure, but you reminded me of your father for a moment.”

Garrus is so startled he huffs a laugh. “I forgot you served with him. Sir.”

“Cut the ‘sir’s, would you?” Victus drains the rest of his glass. “Makes me feel old. But yes I did. Briefly, a long time ago now. He called me up the other day you know, checking in on you.” Victus sounds slightly befuddled by this. Garrus wonders vaguely if the alcohol is getting to him. “He spoke as though he hadn’t talked with you recently. Is your line to Palaven down? We can have that fixed.”

“No, it’s fine,” Garrus tells Victus, feeling a bit uncomfortable. “If he called you, he meant to talk to you.” And that does sound like Castis Vakarian, calling his children’s superiors for updates on their lives and wellbeing, instead of simply asking them outright. Absent a life-threatening scenario, the thought to call Garrus directly wouldn’t even cross his father’s mind.

“Hm. You should know I mentioned to him that your name is high on the list to lead the raid in Iera. Details forthcoming. Not set in stone, but,” and Victus gestures here as if to say, _I wouldn’t be telling you this if I weren’t absolutely certain it’s happening_ , in that frustrating way that Garrus has learned politicians tend to do. “The majority of the ambassadors want it done in a few weeks’ time. Sooner, if possible.”

It takes Garrus a moment to mentally steer his brain back onto the relevant track. “Iera? I was going to put Eritus on that one.”

“Council wants you,” Victus says, shrugging, and the tone of his voice says that’s the bottom line. “Pirates are growing desperate, but so are we. There’s no room for error here. Those raids need to end, or all the colonies in that sector are going to lose the supplies we’ve been sending them over the past year.”

“All right,” Garrus sighs. There’s no point fighting it; if he knows he can put an end to the raids on colonies in the entire Iera system within a month’s time, that takes priority over any futzing around with bureaucrats on the station. “But about Shepard — ”

A ring at the door interrupts him.

“Come in,” Victus says. He folds his hands together on the desk, suddenly looking every inch the Primarch of Palaven.

The door opens to reveal Councillor Quentius, who hands a datapad to his assistant outside the door before entering. Following him inside is Tali, who holds a stack of datapads of her own. She nods at Garrus when she sees him.

“No, don’t get up,” Quentius says as Garrus and Victus rise to greet him. “I won’t be here long. Just regrouping to share updates.”

“She’s stable,” Victus replies. “Minea left about fifteen minutes ago. Forgive me, but I was hoping you were her primary doctor, Char — Chuk — ”

“Chakwas,” Garrus says. “Guess she’s still caught in traffic. Tali, have you heard anything?”

“She’s about ten minutes away,” Tali says. She flips through a few of the datapads and moves to the desk to hand one to Victus and Garrus each. “Comms are still spotty, so she’ll probably be silent until she arrives. But I have the lab results.”

“Admiral Zorah also brought us the culprit,” Quentius informs them. “Terea Vesani. Journalist in training for the past quarter-century, mentee to the woman who attempted to interview Shepard. About two centuries old. Krogan father. Explains the violent tendencies, at any rate.”

“Sir,” Victus says testily.

“Apologies,” Quentius says, sounding not very sorry at all. “She’s being interrogated at C-Sec now. Her lawyer’s arguing for battery, lacking intent for assault.”

“ _Lacking intent?_ ” Forgetting professionalism for a moment, Garrus can’t quite keep the derision from his voice.

“The substance. An asari drink — you’ve heard of it?” Quentius reaches over to Garrus’s datapad and flips through a few pages to a diagram of the bottle, accompanied by a two-page chemical breakdown. “ _Vessumira_. Rare, but not unheard of in asari nightclubs and the occasional upper-class hanar establishment. Toxic to quite a few species. Also, contraband.” Quentius looks around at them as though waiting for the appropriate level of outrage. “As of Amendment Four, Article Two established by the Department of Goods and Services’ free and open trade agreements earlier this year.”

Figures that illegal contraband would be what captured the Councilor’s interest. Garrus thinks briefly back to the concern Minea had shown for him after she’d first seen to Shepard, asking if he or anybody else had had flesh contact, if he was quite sure that the answer was no.

_What kind of species drinks acid socially_ , Garrus finds himself wondering, then bites his tongue when he considers he might have even given it a try once in his younger, reckless years, if it hadn’t meant a quick and painful death. He scrolls down the list of chemicals. He can recognize a few from his substance detection and control classes back in C-Sec, but the specifics of these things he always left to the crime labs, where people who resembled Mordin made their living hunched over bunsen burners and yelling over each about equations on holoboards. He had always been useless at forensic sciences, particularly alien dermatology or haematology: as far as his work in C-Sec was concerned, he sent down specs and they came back up two hours later as evidence. For Shepard, though, he resolves to study this in greater detail later, once he’s alone.

“This drink has been around asari space, you said?” Garrus has reached the bottom of the report, where previous assault incidents with the toxin have been helpfully listed. “And it slipped her mind that it’s toxic to a majority of galactic species?”

Quentius looks to him. “That’s apparently what they’re going with. Heat of the moment impulse. Regardless, we have her for illegal substances, and she’s already been stripped from her internship at CNN.”

“What’s the next development on the battery charge?” Victus asks. His eyes haven’t lifted from the datapad since it was handed to him.

“Depends if Shepard wishes to press charges.” Quentius shrugs with one shoulder. “The state stepped in and made the case on her behalf, but when she awakes and reviews it, she has the right to dismiss it. That datapad should have everything she needs, but C-Sec will be sending updates periodically.”

“Motivations?” Victus asks.

“Since I’m not at liberty to interrogate the perpetrator,” Garrus says wearily, “I’m inclined to call it an isolated incident based on her language on the scene. Revenge for Shepard’s so-called failures on the warfront.”

“Regardless,” Quentius says, “she attacked a member of the Council in the middle of daytime hours in front of multiple witnesses. Counter-Terrorism has a case open as well, but with the current lockdown in place, progress will be slow.” He looks to Garrus, as though this is somehow his fault. Garrus knows better than to take it personally. “Vakarian, your role in this will be as a witness. Exclusively. You’re expected down at HQ later today to give a statement.”

Garrus nods, having expected that. He spies Tali sitting on a low couch on the far wall of the suite, next to the bedroom door, fiddling with her fingers, and realizes she has been uncharacteristically quiet.

He grabs his omnitool from Victus’s desk and straps it back to his wrist, then rises, leaving the shock blanket hanging over the back of the chair. Quentius takes the seat Garrus left behind and continues his discussion with the primarch over the desktop.

Garrus sinks onto a cushion next to Tali. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Her voice is very small. As he’d walked over, Tali clung to a datapad from her stack, and now pretends to read it; Garrus doesn’t mention to her that it’s upside-down.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replies, but her voice is stilted, as though forcing formality. “I’m not the one who got hit in the face with acid.”

“Tali.”

“It’s my fault,” she says in a rush. “You wouldn’t have left the apartment if I hadn’t come over. And now Shepard probably thinks I abandoned her.”

“You caught the perpetrator,” Garrus says, but Tali continues as though he hadn’t spoken:

“I can’t even find any maatke for Raan. I just thought it’d cheer her up while she’s in the clinic. You know, it’s so small, but these little things, they just add up and I — ” She hiccups. “I’m sorry. I already cried on the way here. Dammit!”

Garrus puts an arm around her. “Tell me about Raan.” He keeps his voice low. “Is she all right?”

“It’s just a cold,” she says, trying to calm her breaths. He hears a muted sniff from behind her helmet. “The medic’s overreacting. She’s just going a little stir-crazy.”

“Aren’t we all,” he muses. “You never said how you were doing.”

“Garrus,” Tali stresses, “I’m _fine_. Look at you. You lost a spur. I got a small suit malfunction. That’s fixable. Your spur isn’t fixable.” She takes a deep breath. “ _Shepard’s_ injuries aren’t fixable. Victus lost his son. I’m _fine_.”

“Yeah,” Garrus says, “you only lost your father and your friends and lived through the end of the world. None of us got out of the war uninjured, Tali.”

Unbidden, Butler flashes in his mind's eye, his profile in the mirror with that familiar quirk of his lips — but he banishes the memory from his mind. He can’t think about that here.

“You know it’s not the same,” Tali is saying breathily. He thinks she might be crying again behind her mask, but trying to hide it. “Shepard’s…”

“Shepard’s alive.” He squeezes her shoulder. “And she’ll still be here tomorrow, and the day after. So will I.” He removes his arm, feeling the need to give her some space. “You want to go in and see her? She might be up.”

“…No,” Tali says eventually, and sighs. “No, that’s all right.” She finally lifts her head. “I just wanted to make sure you’re with her. I can drop by later, but I do need to get back to Raan.”

Whatever Garrus was going to say is interrupted by Quentius rising from the desk, apparently wrapping up his conversation with Victus. “…be in touch,” he’s finishing. “And it’s high time I returned to work.”

“Council’s dismissed today, sir,” Garrus says without thinking.

“Something tells me you tried that on Shepard too, with equal success.” And Quentius, demonstrating a rare sense of humor, heads to the door without another word. “Admiral Zorah, will you be joining me?”

Tali rises, and Victus says, “I’ll walk you out. Garrus?”

“I’ll wait for Chakwas. She should be getting in soon.” He boots up his tool and waits for the _ping_ of the network connecting. “I’ll see you, Tali. Sir.”

With that, he’s left alone, and absent any company, he finds himself suddenly exhausted, leaning the back of his head against the wall to the bedroom. Again he finds himself waiting for Shepard to recover. Hospital or home, this feeling stays the same. But he wasn’t made to keep vigils. And Shepard wasn’t made to lie in bed.

He really should’ve taken that drink.

An impatient buzzing startles him from thoughts. He jolts up and heads to the door.

“Finally,” Karin says, bustling into the room and slamming her bag down on Victus’s desk next to the now-empty tumbler. “Bloody taxi kept trying to take me to the lower wards. How are you, Garrus?”

“All right,” Garrus says, a bit taken aback. He’s never seen the good doctor so agitated.

“By ‘you,’ I meant ‘Shepard,’ you know. Oh drat,” she snaps, rummaging around in her bag. “Did I forget — no, here it is. You’ll have to forgive me, I need to set up. Is she awake?”

“She was sleeping last I saw, but might be up by now.” Garrus rises, looking for something to do. “The nurse is still with her. I’ll check.”

He finally heads inside the room.

An asari matron in a white nurse’s uniform is in an armchair, sound asleep. And Shepard is missing from the bed.

Panic grips his chest. There are clear signs around the room dismissing any potential of foul play: the forest green bedcovers have been folded up neatly, and the room is otherwise undisturbed. But none of it keeps his heart from racing as he scans the room quickly for signs of her whereabouts.

On his right, the sliding door out onto the balcony is open, letting in the cold air. Garrus steps outside to the railing, shivering appropriately and almost wishing he’d brought the shock blanket. He spots Shepard standing with her back toward him in a corner of the glass rail. She’s leaning casually enough to fool the average passerby, but her position is still somewhat stiff, slightly hunched over, as though she’s hiding something.

All of the panic in his body releases at once, like a deflating balloon. Replacing it instantly — irritation.

He comes up from behind her, reaches around her arm, and swipes the cigarette from her hand then stubs it out on the railing. She turns around slowly, and he keeps his eyes trained on hers. “Doc’s here for you,” he says pointedly. He can’t help himself from adding, “And you should not be up. Or smoking.”

Shepard doesn’t even have the presence to look guilty, but only because he knows her can he tell her casual posture is a way of avoiding his eyes.

“Can we have this discussion later?” She’s still staring out over the balcony.

“…All right,” Garrus says, resolving not press the issue here, right before she steps back into the battlefield that is Chakwas’s medical examination. Where visits to her doctor had once been unremarkable events on the _Normandy_ , Shepard’s tolerance for them had lowered significantly once they became routine after the war. For her, their necessity, not only helped by incidents like today, only grew more grating. But that is not something they discuss: not to each other, not even to themselves.

When he’d last saw her conscious, she’d had her eyes scrunched closed, squeezing Minea’s hand in response to the doctor’s questions (“Once for yes, twice for no, do you feel any lack of sensation? Tingling? Try to stay with me, Shepard…”). Now, save for the shiny new bandage covering her eye and her left forearm caught in a sling, she looks as well as she had this morning, as much as she ever does these days.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

Shepard shrugs with her good shoulder.

“Chakwas is going to ask you much harder questions.”

Shepard sighs. “I’m wrapped up too much gauze and stuffed with too many painkillers to feel anything.” At his unconvinced look, she continues, “It’s just _acid_. The maws had better aim than that twit.”

He’s not going to push it here, with Chakwas and her nurse a room away. Still holding the cigarette in one hand, Garrus moves his free hand up to her ear, which he tucks some hair behind. He taps the side of her head gently. “And what about here.”

“Garrus.”

“You can tell me to piss off if that’s how you feel,” he says. “Just don’t lie to me.”

Shepard is quiet. She closes her good eye and takes a breath. “I’m relieved,” she says in a rush. “I wanted to laugh. When it happened.”

Garrus watches her.

She opens her eye again. “Chakwas is waiting.”

They’ll continue this later, certainly, in the privacy of their own space. For now, though —

His attention is interrupted by an odd, low hum of far-off machinery. He blinks and looks over the railing; it seems to be coming from below. Within a few moments, the air warms suddenly, as though they were planetside, and the sun had emerged from beyond a thick layer of clouds.

Shepard shivers pleasantly at the change in temperature. “Thank god. Maybe they’ll get the comms back up in our lifetime, too.”

Garrus watches her walk back into the unit and through the bedroom, past the dozing nurse. He listens to her greet her doctor as though it were any other appointment back on the _Normandy_ , hears Shepard laugh at something Karin says in response. Already, the Citadel is warming up, as though the brief cool spell was just a temporary setback, a forgettable incident of the long-distant past.

He takes the cigarette, tosses it into the small bin in the corner of the railing, and he heads back inside, because Shepard is waiting.


End file.
